A glimpse of APRI’s scientific contributions to the Arctic Science Summit Week 2023

In two previous articles we have described the social and artistic aspects of the Arctic Science Summit Week in Vienna (The social facest of ASSW2023 and APRI meets canadian ambassador). In the first article the keynote lecture, One, Two or Many? – Conceptualizing the Arctic in 2023, held by our board member, Peter Schweitzer, was summarized. However, APRI was naturally also actively engaged in the rest of the scientific program of the conference.
In this third and last ASSW2023 article we give an overview of some of our APRI members’ scientific contributions to the conference.

Tiago Silva (University of Graz) presenting.
Photo credits: Jorrit van der Schot.

APRI member Olga Povoroznyuk (University of Vienna) co-convened the interdisciplinary community workshop Towards Sustainable Infrastructure: Environmental, Social and Technological Aspects of Development in the Arctic. It included a poster session, a networking lunch, updates from research projects and a discussion on the future of the IASC research initiative RATIC.
The event was attended by more than 80 scholars, students and indigenous Arctic residents both in-person and online.
Find more information about RATIC here.

On Tuesday Olga Povoroznyuk was also involved in the scientific session and the round table Arctic InfraScapes. It featured a series of research presentations and artistic performances focusing on Arctic infrastructures and their environmental impacts.
More information about Arctic InfraScapes here.

Several APRI members from the research area Cryosphere and Climate presented at the session Observing the Arctic.
Stefan Muckenhuber (University of Graz) joined the conference online and opened the session with his presentation Automotive perception sensors for geoscientific applications in the Arctic.

b.geos was strongly represented by Barbara Widhalm with her presentation Investigation of atmospheric effects on InSAR application in Arctic regions: a comparison of compensation method GACOS and spatial filtering, Helena Bergstedt with Upscaling field measurements using a novel pan-Arctic drained lake basin data set, and Annett Bartsch who shared her results of Rain-on-snow monitoring across the Arctic with satellite data. She could also reveal that the group had just published a paper on this subject in The Cryosphere. Find the full article here.

Bernhard Hynek (GeoSphere Austria) presented the main results of 15 years of glaciological monitoring at Freya Glacier in Northeast Greenland. Read more about the work on Freya Glacier in this APRI article.

Annett Bartsch presenting.
Photo credits: Kerstin Krøier Rasmussen.

Birgit Sattler and Klemens Weisleitner (Uni Innsbruck) convened the session Impact, source and quantities of pollutants on Arctic ecosystems on Wednesday afternoon. Among others the subjects of the presentations included marine litter, organic contaminants, antibiotic resistance, and radionuclides.
After the session Birgit Sattler concluded on the APRI twitter profile:

“After a fruitful session at ASSW2023 about anthropogenic pollutants in Arctic ecosystems we had to face the fact that we are losing the pristine character of the Arctic. Time series show it’s getting worse”.

Klemens Weisleitner and Birgit Sattler at the poster session.
Photos credits: Birgit Sattler.

On Tuesday afternoon APRI members Nicolas Valiente Parra and Victoria Sophie Martin (University of Vienna) co-convened the session Biogeochemistry of permafrost ecosystems and global change, which was focusing on microbial activity and biogeochemical cycling within terrestrial permafrost affected systems in the wake of a changing climate. Victoria Sophie Martin opened the session with her presentation When cool microbes warm up, while Cornelia Rottensteiner (University of Vienna) followed with her presentation Don’t look down: permafrost microbes and soil organic matter in times of global warming.

The Friday afternoon session Tensions of time scales: local youth involvement in interdisciplinary Arctic climate change research was convened by APRI member, Jorrit van der Schot (University of Graz). Spanning across past, present, and future, the session brought in questions of acquired knowledge in relation to age, scientific long- term predictions, and experiences of the youth. In what way is Arctic climate change or local environmental change relevant for the youth? What time scales are relevant? How do the uncertainties of climate change projections affect the future perspectives of the youth? Jorrit van der Schot opened the session with his own presentation Tension of time scales in Tasiilaq – Local youth involvement in the Snow2Rain project.
Read more about the project here.

Jorrit van der Schot presenting.
Photo credits: Tiago Silva.

To give a full description of all APRI members scientific contributions to ASSW2023 is unfortunately out of the scope of this article.
Go to our Instragram or Facebook to get an overview of all the APRI highlights at ASSW or go through the program of the conference to read the abstracts of every session and talk.